Mark Cavendish tweets photo of car that 'tried to run him off the road'

Mark Cavendish has been shaken by a run-in with a car that he says tried to run him and fellow cyclist Russell Hampton off the road.

Yesterday afternoon he tweeted a picture of the offending vehicle, adding: "This man just tried to run me & @russellhampton off the road."

The photo clearly showed the numberplate of the car, a white Citroen, and an elderly-looking man in a fisherman's cap.

He added: "Just noticed in the photo of my road-rage friend, he looks old & fragile. Can assure you he was far from it. Angry, patronising & aggressive.

“He could have ended our careers or worse. He looks old and frail but he was angry, patronising and rude.”

It's perhaps unsurprising that Cav might have reacted angrily to the turn of events - last month he was involved in an incident with a car while training in Italy.

Around the same time, Bradley Wiggins suffered broken ribs in a collision with a car close to his home in Lancashire, and GB head coach Shane Sutton sustained a fractured cheekbone and bleeding on the brain in a separate incident.

After an unpromising start, having to be bribed by her parents to learn to ride without stabilisers, Sarah became rather keener on cycling in her university years, and was eventually persuaded to upgrade to proper road cycling by the prospect of a shiny red Italian bike, which she promptly destroyed by trapping a pair of knickers in the rear derailleur. Sarah writes about about cycling every weekend on road.cc.